What to expect during your school web site project

Welcome to SchoolStatus! 

We're happy you selected us to be your web content management provider. The deployment of a website can be a daunting process. Whether you are a seasoned web builder or a first-timer selected to head up the project, we have you covered. This is what we do, and we'll be your guide. Along the way, we will suggest best practices and recommendations to keep the project on track. Click here to understand our "best-effort" policy.

You have an entire web team on this end

We've assembled the best team on our end to bring your website to fruition efficiently and successfully! We won't let you fail. Your project manager, or PM for short, has assembled the best team, which includes a designer, a developer, and possibly a few other team members based on the scope of work to be done.

Your first assignment

You will receive an introduction email from your project manager (PM) covering some initial items in our process that you can handle before the project kick-off call. If you arrive at the project kick-off having accomplished these initial items, we'll be well underway! However, don't worry if you can't, or if you instead generate some questions. That is the point. We can answer those questions on our call. Below are some tasks that we hope you'll try to handle before the call. 

• The decision-maker: Who on your team has the final say on things? This person should be identified before our kick-off call. If one member of your committee wants landing pages to be handled one way, and others have a different idea, who will have the final say? These types of decisions should be made and then given to your SchoolStatus PM by the decision-maker. Please help us help you keep the project on track by making your SchoolStatus PM clear on who to take direction from.
• Customer Questionnaire: You and your stakeholders should meet and discuss the questions we ask on our customer questionnaire. Having clear answers before our kick-off call will help make the call go smooth. If you can't complete the questionnaire until we have our kick-off call, that is fine, but we do want to get it early on so that our actions will align with your goals every step of the way.
• Design Questionnaire: Help us make your site look great by filling out our design questionnaire. What makes your school unique or great? Do you have a big athletics community? Are you active on social media? This information helps our design team prepare your new site's mock-up to best represent your school and branding that connects with your committees working on the website.
• Logos and Branding: Do you have a branding guide or style guide? Please share it with us. It would be nice to have it for our kick-off call. Our design team wants to make sure that any effort you have already spent on making your brand great... is carried out on your new website. Logos, colors, fonts, and even your mission are all important as we embark on your new website project.
• Training: By the time we publish your architecture from Sitebuilder, we will be ready to train you and any other publishers working on your site in the page editing tools. We first provide you with the Basic Publisher Training that will get you up to speed editing pages. As your team generates questions or runs into obstacles, they can make a list of items that they want to cover in a live training webcast with our support team. Scheduling time internally for training makes sure your key personnel are available when it's time... keeping the project on schedule. Training is ongoing... your team can submit support tickets directly to our support team even while working with your PM on upper-level items. To ensure your launch is on time, begin entering your site's content the moment your site map is published, and we've shared the website worksheet with you.

Content is key!

The content on your website is the main focus. It's what people are coming to see. Without quality imagery, verbiage, videos, and graphics, no amount of good design will do it justice. We can't stress how important it is that you bring good content to the table. One of the best things you can do to prepare right now is to start preparing your new content. Weed out old content and add any important new content. As you build your website architecture in Sitebuilder, consider your main landing pages (Admissions, Academics, Athletics, etc.) and decide what content will be on them. How will you focus people's attention on the other areas of that department? Our team will help you migrate your content from your live website, but presumably, there will be new pages that you establish in Sitebuilder that are not currently out on your site. We'll get you trained in the page editor so that you can begin to add new content and massage the old content that our team is pulling over and positioning for you.

Focus on your top landing pages first. These are the most important pages on your site and include your home page, your school's home pages, curriculum, athletics, alumni, etc. Then, offload the lower-level interior pages to our content migration team. When building out your website architecture in Sitebuilder, it's important to understand that the SchoolStatus migration team WILL ONLY migrate the pages that are created in Sitebuilder. These links become part of the website worksheet that they will use as the blueprint of pages to find and migrate. You are in charge of adding other pages later as needed. Please ask your project manager if you are unclear about anything.

ADA Accessibility

Most websites still do not conform to the latest ADA standards. More and more visually or audibly-impaired users are hitting your website with special readers. The thing is, those readers only work well if the content on your website was prepared with accessibility in mind. This adds another layer of complexity to your website development. Click here to learn more about the SchoolStatus ADA Service Plan. You will find it located here on our support site.

Of course, your website is never really complete. It is a constantly changing marketing tool that may need to change to reflect your school best. Don't let minor details hold up things like usability, sound design, and your overall message. The SchoolStatus platform is made to allow you to refine content over time.

What time commitment should you expect?

You only get out what you put into something. Creating a new website can be a big feat, especially if you are in a large district with many schools. It's important to consider that the amount of time you put into the process will affect your site's final outcome and launch date. Your SchoolStatus project manager is here to help keep things on track, but the launch date of your website is entirely in your hands.

Customers with the most successful websites spend about 4-7 hours per week during the website project. The more time you put in during the process, the better your outcome will be... and possibly will even reduce the time to launch. From the initial kick-off call to your website launch, here's a general idea on what to expect:

• Plan A: Theme: 4-6 weeks
• Plan B: Supplied Design: 2 months
• Plan C: Custom Design: 3 months

If your desired deployment is extremely sensitive and you have a custom design, you might consider deploying your site using one of our themes and plan to launch your new design sometime after. We CAN build and deploy your website using a theme and then swap the theme with your custom design later.

Plan to spell out expectations to your project manager on the kick-off call. We're genuinely interested in creating the best project plan that works for your team.